Naked Empire

Owen paled before Richard's glare. "Nothing is real. We can't know if what we see, if anything, is real or not. How could we?"

"If you see it, then how can you possibly think it isn't real?"

"Because our senses all the time distort the truth of reality and deceive us. Our senses only delude us into the illusion of certainty. We can't see at night-our sight tells us that the night is empty-but an owl can snatch up a mouse that with our eyes we couldn't sense was there. Our reality says the mouse didn't exist-yet we know it must, in spite of what our vision tells us-that another reality exists outside our experience. Our sight, rather than revealing truth, hides the truth from us-worse, it gives us a false idea of reality.

"Our senses deceived us. Dogs can smell a world of things we can't, because our senses are so limited. How can a dog track something we can't smell, if our senses tell us what is real and what isn't. Our understanding of reality, rather than being enhanced by, is instead limited by, our flawed senses.

"Our bias causes us to mistakenly think we know what is unknowable-don't you see? We aren't equipped with adequate senses to know the true nature of reality, what is real and what isn't. We only know a tiny sampling of the world around us. There is a whole world hidden from us, a whole world of mysteries we don't see-but it's there just the same, whether we see it or not, whether we have the wisdom to admit our inadequacies to the task of knowing reality, or not. What we think we know is actually unknowable. Nothing is real."

Richard leaned down. "You saw those bodies because they were real."

"What we see is only an apparent reality, mere appearances, a self-imposed illusion, all based on our flawed perception. Nothing is real."

"You didn't like what you saw, so you choose, instead, to say it isn't real?"

"I can't say what's real. Neither can you. To say otherwise is unenlightened arrogance. A truly enlightened man admits his woeful ineffectiveness when confronting his existence."

Richard pulled Owen closer. "Such whimsy can only bring you to a life of misery and quaking fear, a life wasted and never really lived. You had better start using your mind for its true purpose of knowing the world around you, instead of abandoning it to faith in irrational notions. With me, you will confine yourself to the facts of the world we live in, not fanciful daydreams as concocted by others."

Jennsen tugged on Richard's sleeve, pulling him back to hear her as she whispered. "Richard, what if Owen is right-not necessarily about the bodies, but about the general idea?"

"You mean you think his conclusions are all wrong, and yet, somehow, the convoluted idea behind them must be right."

"Well, no-but what if what he says really is true? After all, look at you and me. Remember the conversation we had a while back, the one where you were explaining how I was born without eyes to see"- she glanced briefly at Owen and apparently abbreviated what she had intended to say-"certain things. Remember that you said that, for me, such things don't exist? That reality is different for me? That my reality is different than yours?"

"You're getting what I said wrong, Jennsen. When most people get into a patch of poison ivy, they blister and itch. Some rare people don't. That doesn't mean the poison ivy doesn't exist, or, more to the point, that its existence depends on whether or not we think it's there."

Jennsen pulled him even closer. "Are you so sure? Richard, you don't know what it's like to be different from everyone else, to not see and feel what they do. You say there's magic, but I can't see it, or feel it. It doesn't touch me. Am I to believe you on faith, when my senses say it doesn't exist? Maybe because of that I can understand a little better what Owen means. Maybe he doesn't have it all wrong. It makes a person wonder what's real and what's not, and if, like he says, it's only your own point of view."

"The information our senses give us must be taken in context. If I close my eyes the sun doesn't stop shining. When I go to sleep I'm consciously unaware of anything; that doesn't mean that the world ceases to exist. You have to use the information from your senses in context along with what you've learned to be true about the nature of things. Things don't change because of the way we think about them. What is, is."

"But, like he says, if we don't experience something with our own senses, then how can we know it's real?"

Richard folded his arms. "I can't get pregnant. So would you argue that for me women don't exist."

Jennsen backed away, looking a little sheepish. "I guess not."

"Now," Richard said, turning back to Owen, "you poisoned me- you admit that much." He tapped his fist against his own chest. "It hurts in here; that's real. You caused it.

"I want to know why, and I want to know why you brought the antidote.